


Servum tuum

by KareliaSweet



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Broken Memory Palace, M/M, Murder Husbands, This one hurt a lot, Tissue Warning, incarceration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-11
Updated: 2015-12-11
Packaged: 2018-05-06 03:04:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5400653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KareliaSweet/pseuds/KareliaSweet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A mirror companion piece to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/4968841">Nunc dimittis</a>, based on a prompt requesting an inversion. If Will died first, how would Hannibal deal with it? (The answer is: not well at all).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Servum tuum

Hannibal stares.

When they pulled him from the body, clawing feral and wailing, he had begged for a piece to keep. For something to consume and keep inside himself. He owed him that much.

Will was owed that much.

They had denied him, of course they had. Metal bit into his wrists as they dragged him backwards, a mess of desperate, violent sorrow. All the broken things inside him turned their sharp edges outward and scraped him raw and bleeding.

Something else unfamiliar lit a match under his skin. Something small that had nestled in his chest, coiled sticky and tar-black, forgotten for years. It opened its eyes and Hannibal felt it move.

Fear.

It had shocked the cries from his throat, mid-scream, and he had lain there gasping as Jack Crawford himself stood over him to deliver his final blow.

“You killed him,” he said, and his shadow passed over and was gone.

Hannibal kept his eyes pinned onto Will’s broken body until the van doors closed over him, still he did not shut his eyes.

Now, he stares.

They pass his cell in whispers, wondering what he sees. They muse on the downfall of the great Hannibal Lecter, how he has become a shell, a cautionary tale to poke and laugh at.

He strikes terror in the heart of no-one. The mask they strap to his face is for show. All he ever does, they say, is stare.

No one asks him what he is staring at. No one cares.

The last one to care fell under a hailstorm of bullets, crying out his name.

He does not visit his memory palace, though the doors remain open. Nothing gathers dust, all the rooms remain gleaming and spotless, but they stay untouched.

He simply sits in his cell, and stares.

Alana visits once. He does not hear what she says to him. She does not try to meet his gaze. She is there for herself, to prove that the stories are true. She prods, she mocks, she goads him, but his eyes never meet hers, he does nothing to acknowledge her presence, just breathes and stares at something just over her shoulder, something intangible and unreachable to them both. She leaves after twenty minutes, once she confirms the specter of his threats are long-dead.

There is no one he can hurt anymore. All his hurt is locked up tight behind his eyes.

No one tries to coax him out of it, no attempts are made to better his mental state. It is better this way, they all say. Safer. Easier.

Years pass. They remove the mask. His vision begins to falter from the strain, he can feel himself going blind, but he does not tell them. There is no need.

Someone notices that he is blinking more than he used to, and a few of the more vindictive nurses decide he needs glasses. They send in a new orderly as part of a hazing ritual. He slides the glasses onto Hannibal’s face with shaking hands as they laugh through the reinforced barriers. _He can’t touch you_ , they say, _he’s fucking neutered_. The orderly doesn’t listen, he only remembers the _Tattle Crime_ pictures that had given him nightmares as a child, and he wets himself before he can hook the glasses behind his ears. Hannibal blinks, the orderly screams, and the glasses drop to the floor with a clatter as he scrambles out the room.

They stay there for a week before anyone notices them.

Hannibal keeps staring.

After a decade, possibly more, Bedelia pays him a visit. She walks with an elegantly tapered cane, her prosthetic unnoticeable under her tailored trousers. She sits and watches him, sees the cataracts that have begun to obscure his vision. Her mouth curls in the closest thing she has left to a smile.  
  
“You can’t look away,” she says softly, “can you?”  
  
Hannibal says nothing.

“If you look away, he’ll disappear.”  
  
Behind her shoulder, Will smiles. A single tear slips down Hannibal’s cheek. Bedelia turns and for a fraction of a moment perhaps she sees him too.  
  
“You couldn’t have conjured him into the cell with you?”  
  
Hannibal shakes his head slightly, and Bedelia arches her brows in surprise. It is his first communication with anyone at all since his incarceration, and despite herself she lets the curiosity tug her closer.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“I could not imprison him.” The words come out harsh and brittle, his once cultured voice roughened from years of disuse.  
    
“And yet you keep him here,” Bedelia says thoughtfully.  
  
Hannibal nods. She does not ask why.  
  
“How strange,” she observes, “that your love for Will Graham would become your greatest act of violence. You will continue to let it torture you until you are dead. A far longer torment than any inflicted on your victims.”  
  
She leans forward, hands clasped over her cane. “What will happen when you go blind?”  
  
“Then I will hear him,” Hannibal says quietly. Will reaches out his hand.  
  
Bedelia stands then, cool and imperious. She is bored now.  
  
“Goodbye Hannibal,” she purrs, “the next time I see you I will be throwing the first handful of dirt into your grave.”  
  
Hannibal smiles for the first time since he watched blue eyes shutter closed. “I would like that,” he whispers as she walks away, heels clipping against the floor.  
  
Will stands, heaving a sigh of relief.  
  
“Thank God she left,” he says, and presses his palm to the glass.  
  
“Hannibal,” he murmurs, “come here.”  
  
Hannibal stares.  
  
“I miss you.” Will’s eyes are shining, impossibly blue.  
  
“Hannibal.” He leans into the glass, fingerprints leaving little smudges of his ghost.  
    
“I love you.”  
  
Another tear slips free. Will says his name once more and it slides into his heart as easy as a knife.  
  
Hannibal stares.  


**Author's Note:**

> Ouch. I'm sorry.


End file.
